


The Archivist

by Lore55



Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Curses, F/F, Gen, Lesbian Character, Serial Killers, Short Story, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24512683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lore55/pseuds/Lore55
Summary: If life was a horror movie Olivia Stirling would not be the 'last girl'. When strange murders start up around her college, she will go to any lengths to protect her friends. Even if it means using dark powers of her own.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	The Archivist

If Life was a horror movie Olivia would not be the ‘Last Girl’.

She might not even be one of the main girls at all. She wasn’t good with kids so she was never a babysitter. She didn’t answer the phone to numbers that she didn’t recognize whether they were coming from inside the house or not. She’d never stolen a ton of money, skipped town, and hid out in a motel with a weirdly well dressed desk clerk.

No, Olivia Stirling would not be the ‘Last Girl’, and life was not a horror movie in any case.

So when the murders started on campus, she wasn’t worried. Even when Mason and Addy, her best friend and beloved, started walking faster between their classes and driving places they normally would have walked, she stayed calm. She wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t worried. Even though there was nothing in common between the victims, boys and girls, tall and short, white, black, and Asian. They seemed random, and they were getting further apart as time went on.

That didn’t change the air that hung heavy over the commons and the green. The hallways were quieter, and less people came to class.

While Olivia wasn’t worried, her roommates were losing sleep over the mounting number of corpses. 

By the time the kill count reached six and classes had yet to be cancelled Addy was even talking about dropping out.

“You’ve paid through the nose to get here,” Mason argued when she first brought it up. They were gathered together in in the living room, in the little house the three of them shared just off campus. The academic district in the city was bordered by small houses and towering apartments, most of them fairly cheap and not all that great.

Addy sat on the couch between the two of them, picking at a loose thread at the edge of her sleeve. She was coiled tight, a ball of tension. Olivia glanced at Mason over her shoulder. His short hair was a mess, not as carefully cared for as usual. It was getting to both of them, and it had been almost two weeks since the last body was found, outside the science labs.

Students were pissed, cops were patrolling every night, and parents were coming and going with their offspring every day.

Even Olivia’s dad had called her and offered to have her flown to wherever he was.

“If you drop out now, would you even be able to afford to come back later?” Mason went on, his brows furrowed with worry. It wasn’t like he wasn’t worried about her safety, but the fact of the matter was this was Addy’s whole future they were talking about here.

Not that that would do her much good if she was dead, but she wasn’t going to die.

Addy buried her face in her hand. Olivia touched her shoulder, frowning.

“Maybe, given the circumstances they’ll refund you your tuition? Or let you come back after everything is over later on?” Olivia offered hopefully. “They have to catch this guy eventually!”

Addy only shook her head. “No way, Olive. If they haven’t called off classes then there’s no way they’ll do that. I don’t know why they haven’t sent us all home.”

“It’s money,” Mason said, voice laced with disgust. “They say it’s to keep normalcy, but their funding will get cut from the government and private grants if they shut down for long.”

Olivia shook her head. “That doesn’t even make sense. https://miranda-mundt-art.tumblr.com/post/169182567773/its-done

“It’s because of Mathews,” Mason figured. “He’s in charge of stuff like that.”

“And the mathematics department. I don’t know what he cares about more. Math or money.”

“Why does the school even need more money?” Olivia snapped at no one. “Don’t we pay enough?!”

“God, what am I gonna do?”

Addy shook her head and lifted her face out of her hands. It was turning an ugly, red and white sort of blotchy that happened whenever she cried. Addy was a sensitive soul. She was supposed to be a pediatrician, but now that was looking less and less likely.

A simmering ball of anger blossomed in Olivia’s chest. How dare this person make her look so miserable? Happy, lovely Addy.

Olivia could only shake her head helplessly. She didn’t know how colleges ran or how to get Addy out of this situation. She wasn’t an accountant. She was The Archivist.

Speaking of.

She looked at the clock. None of them had answers, but she did have a job.

Part of her wanted to call in. To drag Addy into her arms and sooth away her worried. But she had to go. They had bills to pay.

Olivia stood up. “I’ve got to go to work,” she said. There’s a new shipment of manuscripts and some old cups coming in tonight and I have to be there to catalog them.”

Addy grabbed her hand. “Olivia, no. It’s dangerous out there!”

Mason shook his head. “You should just stay in tonight.”

“Guys. I can’t. I’ll only be gone a few hours. Look, I’ll even take the car. Nothing bad will happen. Relax,” she smiled comfortingly at the two of them. “I won’t even be alone. I have pepperspray and I’ll that stuff too.”

“I wish you had a gun,” Mason said flatly.

Addy looked at him. “You know, statistically-“

“Statistically if one of you owns a gun, you’re more likely to be shot with it. I know, I know Addy. Shut up.”

Olivia shook her head fondly at the two and grabbed her purse and keys. She blew a kiss from the doorway and caught Mason’s eye. There was the weirdest look in it. Some flash of something dangerous and reckless that their normally cautious boy didn’t have.

Olivia squashed her worry and stepped into the night. Everything would be fine. It would.

She checked the back seat for an axe murdered before she got in the car and left. The Winton Museum of Culture and History was four blocks from their house. Normally she would just walk to and from it, but tonight she can’t. Mason would have an aneurism.

The sun was still up, and would be for a few more hours when she rolled up around the back of the museum, in employee parking.

Not that she would need much it.

All of the ancient artifacts that she worked with had to be kept in special rooms and carefully controlled atmospheres, lest the centuries old paper wither to dust.

Or worse.

The museum itself looked like someone gutted a pantheon and smashed it face on an office building. It’s long corridors were lined with dioramas and dummies, wax statues played recordings when someone pushed their buttons. Further back were old manuscripts and translated texts and diaries safe for public view and paintings as well. In the heart of it all was a glass glove that glowed with lights shone from underneath.

Olivia checked in with Martha at the front desk and made her way into the back where thick crates were waiting for her and others were already working on unpacking them, cataloging them, and getting them to their new homes. Most somewhere in the back, but a few would go on exhibit in the next few weeks.

Some of them were packed carefully with oil paintings in air tight containers. Others were home to intricately painted pottery and mosaics.

That wasn’t what Olivia was here for. She had a very specialized skillset that they used here in the Museum.

Her work was in a crate pushed off to the side, marked eloquently and subtly with a massive, bright red ‘X’ on the side of the wood.

Olivia lifted the cart onto a flat wheeler and rolled it to her office.

One they were safely inside she locked the door behind her to make sure that no one came in unexpectedly and ruined her whole operation.

She cracked the crate open and found a simple looking cup cast in tarnished gold. It was banded around the lip and against halfway down to the thick stem. It was like a short gold chalice, dulled by the ages.

It was old and dented and smelled vaguely of blood.

Olivia picked a note out of the shreads of wood that cradled her newest project. Along the insides of the grate, symbols had been burned into the wood by someone smart enough to recognize what it was.

The note was simple.

_Danish. 6 th century gold cup. Cursed? Dragon. _

Cursed.

Cursed indeed.

Olivia picked up the cup, ignoring the feeling of the curse trying to crawl through the pored in her skin and sink beneath the surface. It was oild and water. It couldn’t mix with her right.

That was why she was here. That was how she got her job so young and without her degree or even much training.

Winton was the place other museums, libraries, and even certain private collectors sent anything that carried death and despair with them. In turn there things were given to Mr. Higgins, and now to Olivia after her retired. Mr. Higgins had been an old pro, and he’d work charms and wards until he was hard to even look at with the foggy blur it born around his person.

Olivia had no such things. She didn’t need them.

Curses could not touch her.

She spent her time carefully unrebelling the poison threads of dragon fire trapped around the cup. Gold was soft, and curses sank easily into the metal. Olivia had to use carefully made tweezers to pull out each strand and wind them into a ball of concentrated chaos, fire, and vengeance.

One by one, starting from the top and moving down until she dragged them from the base, from the deepest depths, and cleaned the gold thoroughly. It smelled less like blood and smoke when she was done.

Once she had the curse tied up in a mockery of a ball of yarn she dropped it in a thick glass jar and capped it with cork wood. She covered that with thick cloth and tied it all with a yarn bow.

That went up on the shelf built into the wall in her office. Along with a dozen other curses sitting a near row. Some curses she would break. Older ones, darkness that had clung to the world for fourteen hundred years weren’t something that could be so easily destroyed.

So she stored them away, where they wouldn’t hurt anyone, until the time came that she could figure out how to destroy them, or dissipate them enough that no one would get more than a slew of paper cuts.

Most of the jars glowed red, or purple. One was blue.

By the time Olivia had finished her work it was well past dark.

Her phone was abuz with worried texts but she promised she was on her way back.

Addy called her instead.

“You need to come home,” she said quickly.

“I’ll leave soon,” Olivia soothed, packing up the last of her tools. A tiny spinning wheel went into a drawer, along with a finger loom.

“No, you need to hurry up!”

Olivia frowned. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Mason-“ Addy’s voice dropped lower. “Mason thinks there’s going to be another murder tonight.”

“What? Why?”

“There’s a pattern,” Addy said quickly. “One, then one, then two nights later. Then three night. Then Five night, and eight night after that.”

Olivia wracked her brain. She knew she knew those numbers.

“Fibonacci?” Olivia straightened up. She was right. Ever since the killings started, they followed that pattern. It was one of the most common mathematical patterns there was.

“Mason went out to try to stop it.”

Olivia’s blood ran cold. “He what?! Is he insane?”

“He wants to end them for us, he said. I tried to stop him, Olivia. Oh god, what if he gets hurt? What if he dies? He’s our best friend!”

“Addison,” Olivia cut in, “Listen to me.”

She spoke slowly. Olivia pulled on her coat and grabbed her keys.

“Everything with be fine. I promise. I’ll see you soon, and I’ll bring Mason with me.”

She hung up and left without telling anyone. This was more important that saying goodbye to her boss. Ducky would live.

They weren’t hard to find.

Now that she knew the pattern, and now that she knew that Mason was in danger she knew what to look for.

From the first kill right to the second, to the fifth, their spiraled outwards like a seashell.

If she knew that, Mason would too.

Mason, who had never thrown a punch in his life, was going after a serial killed so his friends didn’t need to be afraid anymore.

She had never loved him more and she had never wanted to smack him in the head harder.

She found them on campu. In the middle of the darkened foodball field.

Mason, surrounded by a dozen or more men and women in bad animal masks and long cloaks. She couldn’t see their faces, obviously, and she had no idea who they were.

It was some kind of cult meeting.

The leader was speaking. She knew his voice. She didn’t care at all who he was or what he was saying.

All she cared about was the blood on Mason’s side, staining his pale blue shirt an ugly red.

The leader held and intricate dagger in one hand, crusted in jewels and gleaming in the sliver of moonlight that dripped from the sky.

He rose it up, above his head.

Above Mason’s head.

The rest of the gathered group started walking. Circling Mason and the leader in perfectly practiced, carefully choreographed steps. The sound of their foot falls sounded like death knowlls on the grass. The white yard lines seemed to blur, curve, and shift into spiraled circles all around.

With Mason in the middle.

With Olivia outside.

It was obvious. It was a summoning.

Olivia answered.

She lifted her hand and everything froze.

The marching band of cultists.. The knife aimed for Mason’s heart. Mason’s arms, half raised to block the blow.

Olivia flicked her wrist.

Every neck that didn’t belong to Mason snapped to the side, and all the bodies fell.

She walked over to her frozen friend.

Mason looked up at her with his brown eyes wide. She touched his forehead lightly and his pupils went wide enough his eyes looked black in the night.

“Y _ou didn’t find anything,”_ she said evenly. Her voice overlaid and wavered. “ _You just worried Addy. Go home. “_

He stood, dazzed, and walked away. Leaving Olivia surrounded by dead bodies. Alone.

If life was a horror movie, Olivia would not be the ‘Last Girl’.

She would be the monster.

Life is not a horror movie. But she is still the end game. The final boss, and she cannot change that.

She turned on her heel and walked into the dark.

Olivia walked away from death and went home.


End file.
